Category Archives: Words Words Words

Play Dreams

It’s happened. I’ve had a play dream about orchestra.

Play dreams, for those who have never been involved in theatre, involve a variety of disasters revolving around the production which is rapidly approaching. They trick you by showing up even when you are fully confident in your abilities and the show. By dragging themselves out of your subconscious, they make you second-guess yourself, create your own doubt, and generally weaken that supreme confidence you worked so hard to construct inthe first place. Essentially, play dreams are paradox-creators. They’re self-fullfilling prophecies of the worst kind.

This one wasn’t completely awful, though, since for some reason Ceri was sitting next to me. No clue what she was doing in the cello section – without an instrument, no less, although she had a music stand (which I didn’t) and a good chair (which I was also missing). No, she didn’t have a sax.

I was sitting in the first chair (naturally – play dreams go right for the way to make you panic the most) and the whole thing began without me having my music out and ready, because the damn music stand kept swinging back and forth and wouldn’t support my music properly (this, at least, is based in fact), nor was there a chair available that was the right height. I didn’t even have my cello out of the case before Andras began conducting.

And, to make matters worse, he began with the Bizet.

I should have sat back and let them go. After all, it’s the first movement of the Bizet I detest.

I woke up with that annoying racing heart feeling that’s always worse in the middle of the night. My sense of time was so messed up that I thought it wasmorning, but it was only an hour after I’d fallen asleep. So I slept again to have more vaguely bad musical dreams until I woke up this morning and realised that the concert is not in fact a week away. It’s on Monday.

I’ve been meaning to practice for the past three days, and something always comes up – my husband doesn’t do something out of the house like he said he was going to, I fell asleep on the floor because my back hurt, I lost track of time, etc etc etc. I have a dress rehearsal tonight. I get half an hour this morning, then Saturday, then Sunday, then that’s it. My parental units are in town for the concert and I’m spending the day with them on Monday.

Actually, that’s lots more time than I thought I’d have. For some reason I thought I’d have to cram in a half-hour on each weekend day and that would be it. I can play a lot more than that. Good.

Enough delaying. I’m going to go practice now.

(Including today: two more days. And today isn’t the regular eleven-hour shift from hell since I must leave early for this dress rehearsal.)

Resolution

Rehearsal last night was gruelling. We just didn’t seem to be completely there; all a bit off, not listening to one another, the usual “I’m tired” symptoms. I sat next to someone who did his CEGEP degree in music performance… and I was better than he was. At least I obeyed tempo markings and dynamics. My old stand partner has moved up to sit next to our principal cellist. I’m already sitting closer than I was last concert, but that’s by attrition! With a summer off, however, and two hours of practice a day, I think I can deserve a second chair. I know I’m better than I was when we began; I want to improve even more. And you now what? As much as I love Beethoven and Mozart, I miss Bach. I’m looking forward to getting comfortable with JSB again this summer.

I had the strangest dream last night: I woke up to Stuart McLean and Tom Allen sitting in my old bedroom, and they told me about a writing exercise where if I wrote a thirty-page piece, and if I pledged ten dollars, my company would match it and then CBC would double-match it. The topic was something about Asian educational deprivation.

I told you it was strange. What was stranger was that I didn’t think it odd that these two CBC hosts would be sitting in my old bedroom, chatting until I woke up.

Bits

I’m having a lovely taste of what this summer might be like. I have today off, since I took a co-worker’s shift on Monday. It’s sunny; I have all the windows open. I read a whole book. (Witch Boy, by Russell Moon. Odd.) I doodled about on my laptop. I played my cello for two hours straight. (Much black stuff came off onto my fingertips. Ew. But wow, what a workout. I’m looking forward to keeping this up.) I walked to the pharmacy and did some postal stuff I’d been meaning to do.

I feel fantastic. And I still have a couple of hours before orchestra.

I also moved the coffee table out of the middle of the living room. It just seemed like the thing to do. It’s almost as if with more room in here, I’m in a better mood. No, it doesn’t make sense. Without the table, though, I feel more relaxed, less stressed, less shut in, I suppose. And there’s room for me to lie down on the floor with the laptop, or to set up my cello without moving a bunch of stuff around. When I was a teenager I used to move my room around when I felt like it; it gave me a sense of control over my environment and the freedom to move physical furniture around to reflect my mental furniture. It’s amazing how different life can seem just because you’ve switched the positioning of things around you.

Youth And Talent

I love promoting interest in the arts. I particularly love promoting the arts to young people.

In this case, however, it sounds like the young people are at a point I’ll probably never reach in my lifetime.

CBC Radio Two is broadcasting a series of performances across the country called Up and Coming, a series that showcases a variety of musical talent aged nineteen and under. I’ve been listening incredulously as violins, pianos and cellos stream out from my speakers and repeatedly distract me from my at-home work today. The final straw came when I heard the best rendition of Chopin’s Fantaisie impromptu I’d ever heard, and listened in astonishment when the host told us that the performer was an eleven year old girl from Montreal. Eleven!

These kids are phenomenal, and I love that CBC has created this new forum for young talent to be heard and appreciated. It’s an audition process, naturally. If the jury selects you to perform, you also are entered into a people’s choice type of contest. Those listening at the live concerts, and later on the radio, can vote for their favourite. The winner receives a scholarship to a music program in Banff, Alberta.

These kids out to be national treasures. I mean, just think of how much their brains must be worth already – and they can only get more valuable. Musicians tend to insure their instruments fanatically; maybe they should insure their heads, too…

MIA Resolved

I got my music folder back!

Yay!

The fire alarm went off this morning. Twice. I’m in a surprisingly good mood, regardless. Despite wrist pain (rehearsal was intense, but I walked out feeling much better about myself than I had in weeks. Practice actually does help. Wow.), back pain (no surprise there), and the knowledge that I have an eleven-hour day ahead of me… I’m remarkably chipper. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I had breakfast with friends (what else do you do when the fire alarm has you all up at an ungodly hour?) and that one of the stand-offish store cats jumped on my lap to cuddle this morning. It’s sunny, too, which always helps!

The Spinal Issue

This back thing is just strange.

I don’t normally complain about physical pain. It’s a thing I have. People don’t need to know about what’s going on with my body; they can’t do a thing about it, so why bother them? I actually don’t complain about much, I think, in comparison with most people I’ve met. I swallow it and bear it. I don’t go home from work or call in sick unless I can’t stand up. Heck, I don’t even take aspirin for a headache.

This back thing, though…

I honestly don’t know what to make of it. It’s not something obvious, like pulling it lifting heavy stuff, or being in a car accident, or something I can point at and say, “Ah! This was the cause! Must fix!” Instead, it’s invisible. It just hurts.

Okay, if you’re a medical professional, and you look at my spine, you can see the double curve that self-correcting scoliosis creates. (Such a pleasantly misleading term, that; self-correcting makes it sound like it’s fixed, no longer a problem, have fun!) Everyday people, though, can’t. So I feel a bit awkward on a bus when people are standing and I’m sitting; normally I’d get up and offer my seat to someone. Nowadays, I know darn well that if I stand on the bus with one hand clinging to a pole, I’ll be in severe pain by the time I hit the metro. So there I sit, looking like a perfectly normal woman, taking up a space that someone older or heavily laden could be sitting in.

Perfectly normal, except… I can’t stand for too long. I can’t sit for too long. I can’t use the pillows I used to use. I can’t sit through a movie without discomfort. Driving has me in tears after half an hour.

Every once in a while, I wonder what I did wrong. You know – did I slouch while reading in bed too often, was it my curling style, did the posture I developed in six years of ballet training actually force my spine into an unnatural position? Both my GP and my osteopath tell me that it wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do; they say I was born with the mild spinal curve, then naturally grew the opposite curve further down the spine to compensate for it. Still, though, I wonder… usually around the time I have to pop a couple of Secret Weapons.

The fact that I’m taking pain-killers at all is a huge tip-off that I’m admitting something’s wrong. Every once in a while at work I look at a colleague (who experiences periodic back pain) and say, “My back hurts.” He looks at me helplessly and says, “I know.” The fact that I’m actually saying it out loud is a huge admission on my part. The knowledge that he can’t do anything about it should stop me; it’s not his responsibility, he can’t help me, and both of us know it, so I really should not do it. It’s just… it feels so good to be able to say it out loud to someone. It helps, a little. Don’t ask me why.

I keep coming back to the “what did I do?” concept. I suppose it’s normal for most of Western society, seeing that we operate within a reward/punishment social system all our lives. If you do good things, you get good stuff. If you do something bad, you get back pain that tortures you while you look perfectly normal to others.

My time limit on ergonomic kneely chair has been reached. Now I have to go lie flat on the living room floor and stare at the ceiling until it’s time to go teach.

But I’m not bitter.

Last Straw

I’ve been patient, and good, and did I mention patient? Today, however, was the proverbial last straw. I made new copies of my music yesterday, and as I played it through I made new notes about fingerings, bowings, etcetera. However, my music stand (my $12.99 special purchased over fifteen years ago along with my flute) just doesn’t stand up to supporting paper whilst writing. It swings madly back and forth, which means I have to lean the cello across my body, kind of clinch it between my ribcage and my thigh, then put the bow between my teeth in order to be able to hold the stand steady with my left hand and write with my right hand. Then I have to switch the pencil and the bow, sit up, and grab the cello before it topples over.

Today, that changes. Today I go to the bank, take out $50, and sail up to Italmelodie and buy that lovely solid-table music stand. I will be an irritating customer first, however, and take it apart in the store to make sure it collapses in a portable fashion. (No, wait, that’s pointless; it comes in a flat box, so of course it collapses in a portable fashion. Italmelodie staff, you are hereby saved from an irritating customer. Consider yourselves fortunate.)

Since I will be in the neighbourhood, Ceri and I will munch and have coffee too. Life is pretty good.